Early last month, Gov. John Kitzhaber announced he had convened a "work group" to seek to change Oregon law and restore driver's licenses to the state's illegal immigrants. If his effort succeeds, it will enable criminals to operate more freely in our state and hinder Oregonians' recovery from the recent recession.

Until early 2008, Oregon allowed residents to acquire driver's licenses without either proving legal U.S. presence or providing verifiable Social Security numbers. But on Feb. 4 of that year, then-Gov. Ted Kulongoski's Executive Order 07-22 took effect. "It appears that criminal organizations ... are using Oregon's permissive standards in order to assist persons to illegally obtain" licenses, the order explained. To combat this, it required applicants to furnish "a valid Social Security number or a written statement that the applicant has not been issued a Social Security number," as well as "acceptable documentation to prove name and date of birth."

Within a month of the order's implementation, reported the state Driver and Motor Vehicle Services Division (Portland Tribune, Aug. 6, 2008), the number of applicants taking the licensing test in Spanish -- the language of some four-fifths of illegal immigrants, based on findings from the Pew Hispanic Center -- dropped more than 80 percent. And in June 2008, The Oregonian reported that although 105,000 licenses were issued between February and May 2007, only 93,000 licenses were issued during those same months in 2008. Clearly, the tougher criteria were keeping driver's licenses from illegal immigrants.

In June 2008, a new Oregon law went beyond Executive Order 07-22, requiring driver's license applicants to prove U.S. citizenship or legal residence. And for four years, that standard has held.

But now comes Kitzhaber's effort to gut the law. If he succeeds, he will re-establish the conditions that, pre-2008, allowed identity-fraud enterprises to flourish here.

And consider the potential impact on drugs. Early last month, in its investigative report "Welcome to Heroin City," the Portland Tribune found that "West Coast heroin arrives almost exclusively from Mexico along the Interstate 5 corridor." The story quoted Eric Martin of Oregon's Addiction Counselor Certification Board, who, citing federal drug studies, said "Portland/Salem is basically the distribution hub for the entire Northwest region." If illegal immigrants -- who make up a large percentage of Mexico's drug-cartel operatives -- regain legal access to Oregon driver's licenses, the cartels will be able to operate here even more easily.

And what of jobless Oregonians and the state's overall economy? During the recent recession, as many as 220,000 Oregonians were officially unemployed. At the same time, a study by Oregon State University professor William K. Jaeger maintained, close to 100,000 illegal immigrants held jobs here. And to compound all this, estimated the Federation for American Immigration Reform in 2010, illegal immigrants and their children have recently used more than $700 million a year of Oregon's state and local taxpayer-funded services.

Granting driver's licenses to illegal immigrants would better enable them to reach the jobs they're taking by the tens of thousands from unemployed and underemployed Oregonians -- and attract even more of them to our state. How would this, as Kitzhaber claimed, "contribute to our state's economic recovery"?

In next year's session, the Legislature should reject Kitzhaber's efforts to weaken Oregon's driver's license law. Richard F. LaMountain, a former assistant editor of Conservative Digest magazine, serves as vice president of Oregonians for Immigration Reform. He lives in Cedar Mill.